


Damage

by hailingstars



Series: Febuwhump [17]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Anxiety, Febuwhump, Fluff, Gen, Stress, Stress Balls, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, he gets one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-18
Updated: 2019-02-18
Packaged: 2019-10-31 03:40:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17841758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hailingstars/pseuds/hailingstars
Summary: Peter is Tony's favorite stress ball.ORIn the aftermath of the accords, it's Tony's relationship with Peter that helps him deal with all his trauma.





	Damage

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ramble_On](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ramble_On/gifts).



> I can't believe this is day 18. This is really making February fly by so fast, which is great because I'm freezing cold and just need it to be warm outside. 
> 
> This is gifted to the wonderful Ramble_On, once again, cause they have the best ideas!

Tony left the mess with the accords damaged, broken, in a way he hadn’t thought possible. He trusted even less, questioned even more, and when he sat at his workstation, trying to think up some amazing addition to his already pretty brilliant tech and squeezing the hell of a stress ball, vivid thoughts and memories played out in his head. 

There was Cap, driving a shield into his chest, and that metal arm psycho, killing his mother, and then there was him, trying to hold everything together, to keep everyone safe as they stabbed him in the back.

His fingers broke the plastic covering the stress ball, and went straight through, covering his fingers in the sticky gel inside. He let out a growl, pushed his chair back and shook the dumb thing into the trash can, which was a graveyard to multiple other stress balls that had suffered similar fates. 

He reached for a cloth to wipe the gel from his fingers when a figure somersaulted from his ceiling. He jumped, cried out, and felt his heartrate kick up several notches only to have it crash back down when he saw it was just Spider-Kid, brown hair tousled from the fall, standing a few feet away and smiling. 

“Hey Mr. Stark!” 

“Jesus Christ,” said Tony. His hand automatically went to his heart. One day he was certain he’d have a heart attack. He was certain it’d be Peter Parker’s fault. Tony looked all around the workshop. “How the hell did you get down here?” 

Peter shrugged. “FRIDAY let me in.” 

“She’s not supposed to let anyone down here,” snapped Tony, as he barreled past Peter and grabbed a cloth from his workstation. He wiped off the stress ball gel, and Peter watched with fascination, as if he were curing cancer instead of just wiping smudge from his hand. 

“She likes me.” 

He narrowed his eyes at the boy, trying to calculate how he managed to charm his AI into letting him past, but then pushed passed it. There were bigger questions to be asked.

Tony narrowed his eyes, trying to figure out how the boy charmed his AI, then pushed past it. 

“Why are you not at school?” 

“I dropped out to do the Spider-Man thing full-time,” said Peter. He threw himself into Tony’s chair, and leaned back. “Who needs school when you can be a vigilante?” 

He opened his mouth, about to unleash a string of multiple different lectures and rebukes, about to march that kid right back up to the steps of Midtown himself, until Peter cut him off.

“-I’m kidding! But you should’ve seen your face, Mr. Stark!”

Tony exhaled, and put his hand on his temple. “Why. Are. You. Here?” 

“It’s a teacher work day, and I was bored.” 

“Bored?”

“Uh huh,” said Peter. His eyes fell on an extricate tech build and he picked it up, carelessly. “This is awesome! What does it do?” 

Tony snatched it away from him. “Kills you. Stop touching everything.” 

Peter went back to simply leaning in the chair, and he looked entirely too comfortable, sitting there, moving the chair back and forth with his foot. He was a ball of energy, even at ten o’clock in the morning, and Tony… didn’t mind it. He bit back a smile, surprised almost, that that was something he was still capable of doing. 

He glanced over at one of his drawers. Inside lay a mountain of stress balls waiting to be torn apart and destroyed by Tony’s trauma. Tony looked back at Peter, and the corners of his mouth wanted to do that foreign act again. 

Peter was young and pure and incapable of betrayal. Not this boy, who had stars in his eyes every time he looked at Tony and seemed to ignore anything bad that could be said about Tony Stark. 

“Well” said Tony. “You don’t have school, how about helping me in the workshop today?” 

“Really?” said Peter. “I thought you would send me away.” 

“And give up free labor? What else are interns for?” 

Peter grinned, and Tony’s stress melted. 

The drawer that held the stress balls stayed shut, and yet, Peter somehow still gotten his hands on one. He sat on the floor next to Tony, as he tried to work, throwing it up and down in the air, catching it, while he asked him question after question after question. A notebook sat beside him, and occasionally, Peter would write in it.

After Peter’s seventeenth privacy-invading question, Tony reached the end of his patience. 

“Are you a journalist or a spy?” 

“I’m writing a paper,” said Peter. “For school. It’s due tomorrow. Good thing we have teacher work days, huh?” 

Tony stopped his tinkering and stared at Peter. He wanted to reprimand him for waiting until the last minute, but instead, he just blankly stated, “I’m helping you with your homework.” 

“Well sort of? It’s about you,” said Peter. He threw the ball up into the air, and it soared high. “You know, ‘cause you’re who I want to be when I’m out of college.” 

Tony choked on his own feelings at the same time the ball came crashing back down to earth, hitting Peter square on the top of his head. He tried to shake it off, but it was stuck, and Tony had the sinking realization that Peter had gotten that particular ball out of the trash can. Damn dumpster diver.

He spent the rest of their day together helping hapless Peter get stress ball gel out of his hair, answering more questions about his life, and eventually proof-reading Peter’s essay. It definitely didn’t make him cry. If his eyes were misty, it was allergies. Just allergies. 

*

The following week Peter spent more time in the workshop with Tony. He was a breath of fresh air, company when Tony would otherwise have none, and created enough chaos to keep Tony’s mind focused on something that wasn’t related to the accords, or the rogue Avengers. 

A new worry sprang up, like they always did, that he would break Peter just like the pile of broken stress balls sitting at the bottom of the trash can, but selfishly, he pushed those thoughts back. Kept them locked up and out of the way and enjoyed having the type of relationship with Peter he never got to have with Howard. 

Late nights in the workshops lead to indulging Peter with movie nights, which would then lead to Tony allowing the kid to fall asleep on him, which eventually lead to the thing that surprised and scared Tony the most. A phone call from his school, informing him that Peter was sick, and asking him to come pick him up as his aunt was out of town. 

He hesitated a few seconds, freaking out, before realizing that Peter wasn’t a toddler. He was fifteen, old enough to stay home by himself, and it wouldn’t be the same as taking care of a small child, who needed constant attention. Tony was wrong. 

“This isn’t fair,” said Peter, as Tony practically dragged him away from the school steps. Stubborn, just like himself. “I’m not sick.” 

“Peter you have a fever of 101.3,” said Tony. “And you threw up in front of your Chemistry class.” 

Faced with logic, Peter allowed Tony to shove him into the car and silently pouted as they drove away. Eventually he started back up with his whining and started asking if they could go down to the workshop, if they could work on his suit, and continued on with that line of questioning all the way back to the penthouse.

He pushed him onto the couch, covered him with a blanket, pointed a finger at him, and said, “Stay.” 

Tony made the short trip to the kitchen, to fetch crackers and Gatorade, but when he got back, the boy was gone. He dropped both items and bolted down to the workshop. 

He was too late. 

An explosion greeted him, and when the smoke clear, Peter laid facing up on the floor, with closed eyes. Damaged, Tony panicked, so badly he wouldn’t ever move again. 

Except he did. One of his hands flew straight up, and he tried to sit up. “I’m okay.” 

In seconds Tony was by his side, scooping him up and squeezing the hell out of him, the boy who eased all of his anxieties, even the ones that he kept buried. Tony could never break Peter Parker. He was too stubborn and realizing that made him hug the boy even tighter, until he felt his hands on his back, trying to return the hug, but too sick and weak to do so.

“‘mm sorry, Mr. Stark,” said Peter.

“It’s okay,” he said. 

It wasn’t really. He would yell at him later, when he was coherent, and he’d programmed FRIDAY against his charm, but for now, he’d carry the boy back upstairs, put him back on the couch and this time, he wouldn’t take his eyes off him.


End file.
